My name’s Rob. Some people call me Analogue Rob, on account of my love for vintage analogue music equipment. When I’m not editing skating music I’m a composer, musician, producer and occasional radio presenter.

I grew up in the north-east of England, playing seat-of-the-pants gigs in the scruffy pubs and music venues of Middlesbrough and Newcastle upon Tyne. I started learning the piano at the age of eight, sax at 11 and bass guitar at 15. I played my first proper gig while I was at secondary school and I haven’t stopped making music since. I’ve run record labels and studios, done lots of live sound engineering and toured in lots of bands. My sound art has been exhibited alongside major international artists, and my soundtrack compositions have accompanied everything from podcasts and tech conferences to Japanese dance festivals. I’ve been a support act for Right Said Fred and Doctor and the Medics, and my piano was once destroyed by a horse.

Since 2011 I’ve lived in the middle of a forest in eastern Finland, with my family, my cats and my theremin.

The Skating Music Guy with Viveca Lindfors

Anyway, my daughter is a keen figure skater and I began editing music for her and her friends. Word spread and I ended up working on more and more projects; for the last four seasons I have edited and mastered music for all the solo skaters in the city skating club here in Joensuu, for example. It’s work I enjoy, not only for the satisfaction of making music flow beautifully but also because I like seeing what skaters can achieve when they’re equipped with good music.

By the end of 2015 I was enjoying creating skating music so much that I built a website and began offering my services online. Since then well over 100 solo skaters have joined “Team TSMG”, along with several dozen ice dance couples, some synchro teams, an ice show or two, and even a handful of roller skaters. I now edit around 200 programs a year and editing has become my full-time job. In 2018 alone, programs I have edited have been heard at the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, both the junior and senior World Figure Skating Championships, the World Junior Synchronised Skating Championship, the European Figure Skating Championship and both junior and senior Grand Prix events, as well as in hundreds of other figure skating, synchro and ice dance events on five continents.

I have over 35 years of training and experience as a musician and composer, so my edits are very musical. I know how to make a program that has artistic integrity.

I play nine instruments and I have my own fully-featured recording studio, so if your program needs extra musical parts I can record them quickly and easily.

I’ve worked as a sound engineer for over 25 years, I have a degree in physics, and I’ve spent hundreds of hours testing mixes in ice rinks, so I have a uniquely scientific understanding of rink acoustics and how to make your music work on the ice.